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<h1>Reporting Ghostscript problems</h1>

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<p>
The Ghostscript development team wants Ghostscript to be of high quality,
but we have limited resources for responding to problems, so please read
this document carefully.  Read each section in order, and follow the
instructions in the first one that applies to your situation.  We appreciate
problem reports, since they help us improve the quality of Ghostscript, but
please help us by following the procedure below.

<p>
While we do try to respond to all reports, we give priority to the following
classes of users:

<ol>
<li>Beta testers who have actually given us at least one report on some beta
version supplied to them.

<li>People developing drivers for Ghostscript or applications based on it,
and that will be made freely available.

<li>People who express serious interest in <a
href="Commprod.htm#Artifex">licensing Ghostscript commercially</a>.

</ol>

<p>
We currently have access to systems running Linux, Solaris, Microsoft
Windows (various versions), and MacOS; gcc, Borland C++ Builder, Watcom C++,
Microsoft Visual C++, and Metrowerks CodeWarrior.  If your problem turns
out to be specific to some other hardware or software configuration, it may
take longer to track down, since we will have to rely on other users to
help.

<h2>Check that you have a good copy of the most recent version.</h2>

<p>
Go to

<a href="http://www.ghostscript.com/"
 class="offsite">http://www.ghostscript.com/</a>

and see if the version number of your Ghostscript installation is the
most recent available. If not try upgrading to the latest stable or beta 
release and see if that fixes the problem.

<p>
You can find out what version of Ghostscript you have by typing:

<blockquote><pre>
gs --version
</pre></blockquote>

<p>
(or <b><tt>gswin32c</tt></b>, or whatever your Ghostscript executable is
named).

<p>
If you aren't running the most recent version, please get the most recent
version and install it, per the instructions in <a
href="Install.htm">Install.htm</a>.  Check whether the problem is still
there.  If it is, go on to the next step.

<p>
Even if you are running the most recent version, it is possible that you may
be running a modified copy.  We are confident that copies on the SourceForge
site just mentioned, our other master distribution site on
<a href="ftp://mirror.cs.wisc.edu/pub/mirrors/ghost/"
class="offsite">mirror.cs.wisc.edu</a>, and CD-ROMs of commercial
Linux
distributions are good; if you got Ghostscript somewhere else, please update
it from one of these places, and check whether the problem is still there
before proceeding.

<h2>Check whether your problem is already known.</h2>

<p>
Go to 

<blockquote>
<a href="http://bugs.ghostscript.com" class="offsite">
http://bugs.ghostscript.com</a>
</blockquote>

<p>
and see whether your problem is already known.  If it is, you may want to
add a follow-up comment to the report.  If it isn't, go on to the next step.

<h2>Have you ever run Ghostscript successfully?</h2>

<p>
If your problem is connected with installing or configuring Ghostscript, and
you haven't yet been able to run it successfully, we're sorry, but we can't
provide help.  You might want to re-read the <a
href="Install.htm">instructions</a> for installing Ghostscript, mentioned
above.  If that doesn't help, all we can suggest is that you post your
problem to the Usenet newsgroup <a
href="news:comp.lang.postscript">comp.lang.postscript</a>.  If, after you
find the solution, you have suggestions for improving the documentation,
please let us know.

<h2>Reproduce the problem with Ghostscript alone.</h2>

<p>
If you are running Ghostscript through some other piece of software, such as
a GUI-based viewer, you will have to reproduce the problem with Ghostscript
alone before we can look at it.

<ul>

<li>If you are running Ghostscript through Ghostview (for Unix and Linux),
try to run the same file through Ghostscript (<b><tt>gs</tt></b>) without
using Ghostview.  If you don't know how to do this, or the problem doesn't
show up, please contact <a
href="mailto:ghostview@cs.wisc.edu">ghostview@cs.wisc.edu</a>.

<li>If you are running Ghostscript through GSview (for MS Windows and OS/2),
try to run the same file through Ghostscript (<b><tt>gswin32</tt></b> or
<b><tt>gswin32c</tt></b>) without using GSview.  To find out more details
about how GSview is calling Ghostscript, start GSview with debugging enabled
(e.g. <b><tt>gsview&nbsp;/d</tt></b>): these details can be seen using "File
| Show Messages" and can be copied to the clipboard for pasting into a text
document.  If you have trouble doing this, or if you can't reproduce the
original problem with Ghostscript alone, please contact <a
href="mailto:gsview@ghostgum.com.au">gsview@ghostgum.com.au</a>.

<li>If you are running Ghostscript through any other software (e.g.,
<b><tt>dvips</tt></b>, a printer spooler, etc.), we are sorry, but we cannot
help you unless you can tell us how to produce the problem using Ghostscript
alone.

</ul>

<h2>Check whether you are using a third-party printer driver.</h2>

<p>
The file <b><tt>src/devs.mak</tt></b> lists all the drivers about which we
can answer questions; the file <b><tt>src/contrib.mak</tt></b> lists all the
other drivers.  If you are using a driver listed in the latter file, please
try to reproduce the problem using a driver listed in the former.  If you
can't, please contact the author of the problem driver.

<h2>Send us a problem report.</h2>

<p>
Please go to the problem reporting form in <a
href="Bug-form.htm">Bug-form.htm</a> and follow its instructions.

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<p>
<small>Copyright &copy; 2000 Aladdin Enterprises.  All
rights reserved.</small>

<p>
This software is provided AS-IS with no warranty, either express or
implied.

This software is distributed under license and may not be copied,
modified or distributed except as expressly authorized under the terms
of the license contained in the file LICENSE in this distribution.

For more information about licensing, please refer to
http://www.ghostscript.com/licensing/. For information on
commercial licensing, go to http://www.artifex.com/licensing/ or
contact Artifex Software, Inc., 101 Lucas Valley Road #110,
San Rafael, CA  94903, U.S.A., +1(415)492-9861.

<p>
<small>Ghostscript version 8.53, 20 October 2005


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